Jade War: No middle-book syndrome here

Author: Fonda Lee

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Jade War is the second book in the Green Bone Saga, the first of which is Jade City. In the first book, we’re following various members of the Kaul family, who run a sort of crime syndicate in this fictional setting of Janloon, the capital of the island of Kekon, which is the only source of bioenergetic jade in the world.

In this Asian-inspired, urban, high fantasy, Jade can be used by certain people to give them superhuman abilities. Kekon is this incredibly honour-based society, where the green bone clans control most of the island and the whole supply of jade. Green bones are people who can use jade, which takes training and can usually only be used by the Kekonese people.

In the first book, we discover that a foreign government has invented a drug called shine, that will allow non-Kekonese people to utilise jade without years of training, and this has the potential to upset power-relations in Kekon and the world.

I can’t say much about the plot of this book to avoid spoiling the first one. Going into this, I feared this might have some middle-book syndrome where a book just bridges the gap between the first and the second, but this was so much more.

We get new characters and places, new struggles, development of all of the main characters and the plot, and this book was just as good as the first one.

This series deals with honour and duty, family dynamics, political intrigue, and all kinds of interesting themes. There’s a complex plot, geopolitical machinations, and, I won’t lie, it took me a while to get back into this. It’s a thick book, and it took me a good 100 pages to get back into the world because it’s probably been about a year since I read the first one, but once I was back, I was feeling everything, and there were so many twists and turns.

The characters in here are definitely morally grey. Kekon is an honour culture, and often, to me, when I read something like that, I’m rolling my eyes at these antiquated rules and BS, but in this book it doesn’t just feel like an excuse for abuse or domination and instead an actual code by which people live.

In this world, the criminal syndicates or clans don’t just demand tribute from businesses and give nothing in return, but they maintain an alternative governance structure and system of justice for those who are part of the clan, and in this book we actually see a contrast between the ways its done in Kekon and the way it’s done in other places, which is a really interesting comparison.

I can’t recommend this series highly enough, and though I’m looking forward to reading the last one, I also know it’s liable to destroy me.